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West Seattle scene: ‘King tide,’ tied for highest of the year

Thanks to Russ Walker for the photo from Alki this morning, a 13.3-foot high tide, tied with 8:04 am tomorrow for highest predicted Seattle tide of the year. While the lack of stormy weather meant it was a rather placid scene, it’s still important for those – like the state Ecology Department – who are tracking these tides, called “king tides,” to document “how very high tides affect the natural environment and our coastal infrastructure (to) help us visualize what sea-level rise might look like in the future.” If you took (or take) photos, share them with the Ecology Department’s Flickr group (as Russ and other West Seattle photographers did).

A more accurate description would be the highest “predicted” tides of the year. Often when there’s a storm at sea and low barometric pressure we can have “actual” tides that can be 2′ higher than “predicted” tides.

NOAA’s data makes the point that higher mean tides lead to more frequent extreme events – it’s not so much a concern that the regular water level will be higher, but that events such as last December will occur more frequently. A tide level that might have been reached every ten years could become an annual event.

(Sound Transit file photo, Capitol Hill) By Tracy Record West Seattle Blog editor The in-person open houses are over. The online open house continues. You have less than two weeks to get your opinion(s) into the wide-open